10 Mar 2010

Mozilla Revises MPL

Earlier today, the Mozilla Foundation announced its process for revising MPL 1.1, in a public comment-driven process lasting until the fall.

I like their process announcement, which proposes a reasonable schedule and workflow. The Foundation has clearly studied the GPLv3 process, and has drawn good conclusions about what worked for us, and what will work better for them if done differently. They’re using Co-ment, the wonderful Web-based text annotation system designed and implemented by Philippe Aigrain and his colleagues at Sopinspace in Paris. They helped us design the Stet system we used for GPLv3, and they’ve gone far beyond it with Co-ment.

The MPL has been an influential free software license, but I agree with the unstated proposition of the Mozilla Foundation that it’s now showing its age. I think this is precisely the right time to be doing the revision, and I wish the Mozilla folks a smooth, thoughtful, and successful process. I hope everyone who cares about the health of Web, and about free software licensing, will register and get involved. SFLC and I will be doing whatever we can to help. And I sure look forward to being an insignificant minor player this time around…

A Renewed Invitation to Kernel Developers

To begin with, I welcome the current expressions of opinion by kernel
developers. As I have repeatedly said in private communications, and
will now say again publicly, I will gladly take any steps possible to
include the kernel developers in the ongoing discussion process. I
invite them to represent themselves in any way they choose, and pledge
to work with them to create, even at this late date, a form of
participation in the deliberations about GPLv3 that would reflect
their preferred means of work, and be appropriate to their position in
the community of developers.

I appreciate the positions taken publicly by the kernel developers.
To be clear, the process of deliberation in which FSF and everyone
else has been engaged since January is not only a process of taking
positions. It also involves listening to the positions others have
taken: it’s the effect of listening as well as talking that gives
deliberative democracy its effectiveness as well as its legitimacy.

I have been doing a job this year, on behalf of the Free Software
Foundation as a client of the Software Freedom Law Center. In this
time, I have watched hundreds of serious-minded and busy people take
time to listen to one another’s needs, to explain their principles, to
deliberate on the arrangements that affect their lives. For my
colleagues and fellow citizens who develop the Linux kernel, I have
nothing but respect. I ask them please to join the conversation that
is going on, to listen to others whose views may not be theirs, and to
help the community make the best possible choices about matters of
deep common concern.

12 Apr 2005

Yet Another GPL3 Rumor

I’ll probably need a whole category for these
as the process of updating the GPL begins to gather steam. It began
with an
article in internetnews.com reporting a conversation with Mike
Olson of Sleepycat Software. Mike told
internetnews.com that the
Free Software Foundation
was still thinking about the problem posed when
someone modifies GPL’d web services software and goes into business
providing competing services using the modified software, but without releasing
the modifications to the community. Mike was right; that’s an issue
FSF expects to address in GPLv3. Richard Stallman and I have both
talked about it publicly.

But internetnews.com understood Mike to be saying that GPLv3 might
somehow apply in a new way to the modifications made by companies that
customize GPL’d software for their own use but never distribute to
anybody else. This was confusing enough, and plainly wrong. We
wouldn’t do that. But then someone went even further and posted
to Slashdot suggesting that a future GPL might require users of
free software, such as Amazon or Google, to pay fees simply for using
GPL’d code.

Some Slashdot readers thought this last contribution was FUD or
intentional flamebait. I hope it was just a silly but innocent error.
Either way, the rumor was nonsense by itself, and I wouldn’t normally
write in response to a nonsensical rumor. But the occasion gives me a
chance to say something about reading GPLv3 news in general.

All future versions of the GPL will fully protect the freedoms that
the Free Software Foundation defined decades ago, and which we believe
all software users everywhere should be guaranteed. Freedom zero, the
freedom to use software, is infringed if you are required to pay fees
or make promises in order to use software, anywhere, anytime. FSF
will never publish a license that violates freedom zero. Similarly,
freedom two, the freedom to modify a program, and freedom three, the
freedom to share, are violated if private modification is prohibited
or sharing is required rather than permitted. You can always modify
free software for your own use, and decide whether to share it with
other people. If you share with others, the GPL says now and always
will say that you have to give them the same freedoms you were given
by others who contributed to the code you are using, modifying and
redistributing.

FSF has promised the free software community generally, and the
contributors to FSF-sponsored software projects in particular, that
future versions of the GPL will conserve the spirit of the original
license and protect the freedoms for which FSF stands. If you read a
report claiming that FSF is considering license terms incompatible
with the fundamental freedoms laid out in the preamble to the
current GPL, you know it isn’t
so.